


Three Months Later

by innerbrat



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerbrat/pseuds/innerbrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sam's left a person's body, he leaves marks on people's lives that sometimes take a while to fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Months Later

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BethCGPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethCGPhoenix/gifts).



> I didn't even sign up for this fandom, but I saw the prompt and couldn't resist! 
> 
> Many thanks to dharmavati for the beta.

Resting my hands on the edge of the sink, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.

I never used to spend this much time looking at myself. Not beyond the usual brush teeth-wash face routine of the day. Now I do it frequently – every time I catch the eye of my own reflection, I give him another look, almost as if I wasn't expecting to see him.

It sounds crazy. I'm _not_ crazy.

Right?

“Dad?”

Jaina knocks quietly on the bathroom door, and peers in, smiling at me in the mirror. Looking at me looking at myself.

“Can you come check my homework?”

I smile at her. My reflection's smile is warm, loving and entirely my own.

“I'll be right out, sweetheart.”

She's been asking me for homework help on a weekly basis for the past three months. Ever since she got an A+ on her physics assignment. In all the time she's been going to school in this country, she never once asked me for help before that.

Since then, the two of us have been pulling a steady B average if we work together. Everything she's learning is so completely new to me, I've taken to trying to read her textbooks every time she leaves them at home, just to try and catch up. I didn't realize how poor my English was until I tried High School Science books. And Jaina still looks disappointed in me every time I don't know something. Six weeks ago, she would look betrayed.

I wish I could remember what I did to get her that A+. I've read the paper and I still don't understand it.

I wish I could remember _anything_ about those three days.

I glance at my reflection before I leave the bathroom. I don't know why. Maybe I'm wondering if he knows what happened three months ago.

The kitchen is warm and filled with steam and the smell of dinner to come. Sita is hovering over a pot, and has been using exactly half of the table for chopping space. The other end has been taken over by Jaina's school work, and there are two chairs set by the open book. One for her, and one reserved for me.

Nirav is sitting on a third chair, watching his mother work. When Jaina and I come into the kitchen, though, he screams out my name and holds hands out for me. I sweep him up, and kiss him lovingly as I sit down to study Jaina's work.

Nirav has been very much attached to me these last three months. Sita says he spent three fussy days solidly avoiding me and refusing to be held, before he suddenly started his current phase of clinging to me. I don't know what I did to make him hate me so much, and I don't know what I did to turn that around into love, but I am definitely not going to complain.

You can see where I'm having trouble. A man should not be able to simple lose three days of his memory. To lose three days with his family, and have everything change suddenly.

I'm a hero.

Sita reminds me of that often. Like now, when she takes a break from stirring the curry to kiss me, and then Nirav, and tell the three of us that we have twenty minutes before she expects the table to be ready for dinner. She calls me her hero now as a fond nickname, and I'm growing used to it. For many weeks, I have never let any discomfort show about it, and maybe I won't feel any either, soon.

Three months ago Sita's brother Raja was trapped in his store when some local youths set fire to the building. There was no way I could have known about it, but I raced across town and broke into the store, rescuing Raja and his wife and their baby daughter. I could have died. I have no memory of rescuing my family and I have no idea why I did it. Raja and I have never been friends, and I've never been comfortable about going into danger. Coming to America was the biggest risk I have ever taken, and that has proven hard enough for me.

 I'm very glad I did it. But I'm also glad I don't remember any of it.

I scowl at Jaina's homework, and realize that I do understand it. Perhaps better than her, now that I've been talking to Raja about some of this. He's working for me now while he studies for a test called the G.E.D. He is hoping to go to college and become an engineer, which means he has to know about science as well. This was my idea.

I think it's a huge risk, and that he's putting his family through a lot of stress for a dream that might not come true. The insurance company gave him money when he lost his store, and with the money I'm paying him his family are managing, but the money is not going to last forever. He has no guarantees he'll ever be a success as an engineer.

I think it's a stupid idea and since I had it, I've tried many many times to persuade him to work for me full time instead and support his family. He argues with me every time, especially as he insists it was my idea and that I said with absolute certainty that he would be successful. He has also many times pointed out that we can stand to be in each other's company just enough to make the present situation workable. If he started full time, we would be lose all the good will we've been working on for the last months.

I don't understand why I would give him such dangerous advice. It sounds crazy. But I'm not crazy.

I can't be crazy.

Jaina and I complete her homework, and we feel confident about it. She even thinks she might be able to get another A with this one. She clears the table for dinner because Nirav is pulling on my beard and babbling about the time I didn't have it. I catch Sita looking at him with a worried expression and I press my finger against his mouth to quiet him.

Dinner is delicious, as it always is. The phone rings soon after we've finished and Jaina rushes for it. Sita takes Nirav from me and takes him to our room. She'll come back later to clean up, but now I have my own time to sit and watch the TV.

As I bend over to turn the box on I see my reflection in the screen and I hesitate again. The face that looks back is dark on the black screen, distorted in the curve of the glass, but still definitely my own.

I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, but remembering Nirav's childish babble, I think I can remember. A beardless, white American, older than me by a few years, already with a splash of white in the light brown of his unkempt hair. I'm happy to see my own clear brown eyes looking back, but I still find myself looking.

I never correct Nirav when he talks of this scary stranger who took my place. It's the only thing preventing me from believing that I've lost my mind. It makes no sense, but at least I can share my delusion with a toddler.

Sita comes into the room and catches me looking, and I quickly turn the television on, replacing my face with a news broadcast. She doesn't like it when look at my reflection too long.

“Can I help you clean the kitchen?”

I would never offer to do that before, but I have recently discovered that she likes help, and it distracts her from her other constant worries about me. I suppose I helped her in that time I don't remember, and she liked it then. It seems to be the only part of those three days she did like.

We chat about Jaina and her friends, and whether we should let her see more of them. She has one friend, that Sita quite likes and maybe she could come over for dinner. Jaina's been pushing for more independence recently and we're worried about that. I'm concerned I let her go too far when I wasn't myself, and now we might lose her. Jaina and I argued a lot shortly after that and I shouted at her, something I'm ashamed of. I wish I could say that was something I don't remember. Sita says that hearing me raise my voice to my daughter was just another thing that made her worry about me.

It's the first time she's really admitted that to me. It's the first time she's said out loud that she was worried about me at all. That I remember, anyway.

We sit at the table to watch television, but I take her hands in mine over the table instead.

“I'm sorry you were worried about me,” I say. “I'm sorry I let you down.”

She smiles a sad smile, and rubs the backs of my hands with her thumbs.

“No, my love,” she says. “You're a good man. I think I know what's going on.”

Without waiting for my opinion, she explains. “It must have been horrible for you, in that fire, with Raja and Preeti and Daya. You were so incredibly brave to save them all, but I can only imagine how terrifying it was.”

I say nothing, because I don't remember. Like her, I can only imagine how terrified I would be.

“I was talking to Savita at the market today,” she explains, after waiting for an answer from me that didn't come. “And she was telling me that sometimes people act strangely after a bad experience. Memory loss, change in behavior, that kind of thing. Her friend Kirsty says her husband was never the same after he came back from Vietnam.”

“I don't think rescuing a family from a burning building is the same as going to war.”

“No,” she concedes. “But that's why you're getting better.”

I stop, and feel myself frowning. “Am I?”

Sita kisses my hands. “Maybe you haven't noticed, but you're staring at yourself a lot less than you used to. And you haven't talked to yourself at all since that time. You're getting better.”

I smile at her warmly, so pleased that I don't even consider that the fire was at the end of the period of time I don't remember. Maybe I'm remembering times wrong anyway.

“We're getting better,” I say.

It hasn't been easy, none of this. But it _is_ getting better, and soon we will be able to put it behind us.

Maybe I was crazy. But I'm better now.


End file.
